Toshiba To Halt HD-DVD Production 494
Multiple users have written to tell us that Toshiba is planning to halt production of devices related to HD-DVD. According to Japanese broadcasting network NHK, Toshiba will lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" as the format war finally draws to a close. Regardless, investors are pleased that Toshiba has made the decision to cut its losses. This comes after a last-ditch price cut was unable to prevent Wal-mart from throwing their lot in with Blu-ray, although some sources suggest that Wal-mart was already aware of Toshiba's plans to withdraw from fight.
Better post next time (Score:2, Informative)
Which enjoyed better success in professional [wikipedia.org] settings.
Mini-disc became Mini-HD [wikipedia.org]
Memory stick is still being used. [wikipedia.org]
It ain't over till the fat lady sings (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where Does This Leave the Xbox? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:whew, fewer syllables (Score:4, Informative)
Blu-ray Disc Association is slightly bigger (Score:5, Informative)
The current 18 board members (as of January 2008) are: [blu-raydisc.com]
Like the PS2 was one of the biggest DVD players in the beginning, the PS3 will be the biggest Blu-ray player... that is untill in 1 1/2 year a $100 Samsung / LG profile 2.0 Blu-ray comes on the market.
Re:whew, fewer syllables (Score:5, Informative)
This is not insightful, you've just made up facts, so you're forcing me to finally sign up.
I visited Samsung back when DVD technology was still in the labs and their guys were very keen to show it off. They all referred to it as a Digital Versatile Disc. Remember at this point you couldn't buy a DVD in the stores and data DVDs became mainstream a long time after videos.
Also for it to be a backronym then it couldn't have been an acronym beforehand. From dictionary.com:
backronym jargon
(Backward acronym) A word which has been turned into an acronym
or
n. [portmanteau of back + acronym]
A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended.
[/rant]
Thanks for the misinformation Sony fanboy (Score:5, Informative)
So what? Macs have better success in desktop publishing than PCs, that doesn't change that fact that 90%+ of all computers are PCs.
Mini-disc became Mini-HD
And no one but Sony uses either of them.
Memory stick is still being used.
by Sony products. Face it, Sony has a poor track record for format introductions. Want some more examples?
DAT (digital audio tape) [wikipedia.org]
"Universal" Media Disc (UMD) [wikipedia.org]
Super Audio CD (SACD) [wikipedia.org]
ATRAC [engadget.com]
Re:whew, fewer syllables (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Better luck next time (Score:3, Informative)
Not that it matters. 1.1 is all 99% of people will ever need... who needs online content on your bluray player? It'll all be advertising anyway.
Maybe in 5-10 years when downloads become popular.. but by then all bluray players will have some kind of 2.0 support and be able to participate in that when it happens.
Re:Better luck next time (Score:3, Informative)
I'm guessing most Players will be profile 1.1 (or maybe 1.2) except for computers and the PlayStation 3.
Re:Better luck next time (Score:4, Informative)
SOny decided to go off on a tangent...
and so on, and so on... a little research is in order, before throwing on the Sony Troll hat.
Re:The real competition wasn't HD DVD... (Score:1, Informative)
(wrong item #1) your 25-50 gigs is at mpeg2 not any of the mpeg4 codecs(xvid, divx, wmv, h264), they could be down to 10G (and less) using a newer codec with the same quality/compression ration and have been available for awhile now to dl.
(wrong item #2) your uncompressed DVD movies 5-10 gigs is not uncompressed, they are also mpeg2. Uncompressed would be about (assuming colour=32bit) 32(bits per colour)x720(hpixels)x480(vpixels)x30(fps, 29.97 really, and sometimes 23.976) so that comes to ~330mbit/second=~41MB/sec
for a 90min movie that would be about 220 gigs uncompressed and that contains no audio.
While the colour bits may be off, I still don't think it will bring it down to 5-10gigs from 220.
For regular DVDs you may be comparing mpeg2 (5-10gigs) with some type of mpeg4 codec (usually 1.4gigs is about the same quality).
Re:Better luck next time (Score:5, Informative)
My theory about why it failed is that this was the same time the government decided we needed to slow down on our huge highway system. So 70+ Mph roads were reduced to 55 Mph. About the same time, there was an attempt to introduce the Metric system, requiring cars to have kph on their dials and Speed Limit signs to include it as well. The problem (my theory) is that they chose to equate 55 Mph to 80 Kph. It didn't take a calculator to figure out that 80 Kph is closer to 50 Mph, because it was clearly obvious on your own speedometer! So drivers eschewed the Metric system so they didn't have to slow down even more. If the powers that be had had the greenest of green marketing team, even they would have realized posting 90 Kph (almost 56 Mph) would have garnered more public acceptance.
But as a result of the attempt, we now live in a perpetual limbo. Gas and milk are sold by the gallon. Cola (soda pop, whatever you call it) is sold by the liter. Everyday life is measured in inches, feet, yards, and miles, while anything scientific is carried out in meters. Dry medicine is measured in milligrams, but our weight in pounds. Sigh...
Xesdeeni
Re:whew, fewer syllables (Score:5, Informative)
An even smaller percentage know that it actually stands for "Vertical Helical Scan," a technical acronym which describes the physical tape format and transport.
Slow down there Sony hater (Score:5, Informative)
Compact Disc : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc [wikipedia.org]
3.5" Floppy : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#New_3.0-3.5.22_formats [wikipedia.org]
Betacam : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacam [wikipedia.org]
And Mini-disc is very popular in Asia. Just because it failed in your small part of the world doesn't mean it didn't take off somewhere where there's an actual population bassin.
It's funny how people always bash Sony for even trying to bring new stuff out to market.
Re:Better post next time (Score:3, Informative)
Not true.
BetaCam is the dominant professional video format, but is completely different from BetaMax. Sony just likes to put "Beta" in front of its video equipment, since the path of the tape through the machine looks like the Greek letter Beta.
Re:whew, fewer syllables (Score:5, Informative)
That's because they're right. VHS has been Video Home System [wikipedia.org] for decades, probably since its consumer launch (and certainly at least soon afterward).
The engineers might have called it "vertical helical scan", but it wasn't ever widely marketed that way.
Great... (Score:2, Informative)
It takes less than 2 minutes to get to the movie from PowerOff on the HD-DVD player.
Re:Better luck next time (Score:2, Informative)
So, Toshiba along with Microsoft were the bully and warmonger in this case, not Sony.
Re:whew, fewer syllables (Score:5, Informative)